The most important thing to say at the moment of writing is that there is no indication of a Ukrainian counteroffensive - yet - although that could change at any moment.
Leaked Documents
Much newspace has been preoccupied by the issue of the recent leaks. I notice that sources on which I tend to trust (including former CIA officer Larry Johnson) are largely of the opinion that the documents are authentic. The notion that some of them were doctored before being leaked is, to my mind, rather a tall claim, and I think it is one that US sources have put about in order to discredit some information in the documents which run directly counter to what they have been encouraging people to believe.
Just because the documents may be authentic does not mean that the information they contain is accurate. In fact they may testify to the rather shallow quality of some of the information on which the US, in particular, takes the decisions that it does. For example, the claim that Russia has committed 97% of its forces to Ukraine is patently absurd and nobody with any knowledge of the situation or of Russia could possibly take it seriously. The estimations of casualties are also very suspect. But perhaps this is the kind of information that Ukrainian intelligence feeds to Washington.
The later document releases are beginning to convey some startling information, rather in the manner of the original Wikileaks revelations, as in the claim that Israel’s Mossad has had a hand in the recent popular demonstations against Natanyaju’s intended judicial changes. Other information is entirely predictable: e.g. that Zelenskiy’s telephone calls are being listened to by US intelligence. Who can be surprised that the US listens in to anything that is listenable.
While some US media and media sources have tried to attribute the leak to Russia that attempt in itself suggests that Russia was not involved, and that the documents are either an approved US leak, intended, perhaps, to confuse Russia as to real US and Ukrainian intensions and as to the real state of their preparations for a counteroffensive; or that they represent an approved Ukrainian leak, serving a similar purpose; or a leak from some disaffected party, probably US.
The documents probably do reliably testify as to the extent of US involvement in every aspect of the war short of regular US army forces on the ground (but special forces, yes, apparently a hundred) in Ukraine, and they probably reliably testify to the relatively poor state of Ukrainian preparedness, in particular with respect to the degraded state of its air defenses, a situation which may account for signs of hightened Russian air activity and air boming over some of the areas of fighting. This prompts the thought that Washington is trying to evade responsibility for a certain (?) Ukrainian defeat by releasing these documents, attributing the leak, inaccurately, to Russia, expressing wonderment at the information they contain so that either a good excuse is planted in the public mind as to why the counteroffensive should be called off, or for why it failed, assuming that it does indeed fail.
Preparedness for the Offensive
Where or not one judges the Ukrainian army to be in a sufficient state of preparedness, the counteroffensive is not something to be taken for granted or lightly dismissed. Most commentators appear to take it as read that it will be launched quite soon. One must wonder why Secretary of State Blinken would advertise his assessment that it will occur in the next two to three weeks. But the US has a strange tendency to such helpful advertisements of its war intentions: e.g. the 2019 RAND study on “Extending Russia,” or the latest Pengagon budget in preparation for “war with China.”
Assuming that the offensive will occur, then one must be prepared for any of a wide range of possibilities. Ukrainian and US sources have given indications that it might involve an attack on Crimea, or an advance to the borders of Crimea that would directly threaten the peninsula (a consequence of a successful Ukrainian advance from the Ukrainian-held portion of Zaporizhzhia, down to Maritopol towards the sea of Azov).
This may be an outlier attempt to persuade Russia that there is scope for negotiation over the future of Crimea, one that might formally acknowledge Russian control over Crimea in return for its withdrawal of forces from the Donbass, something that Russia would be very unlikely to entertain except, just possibly, under extreme military threat to Crimea. However the demonstrably pro-Russian sentiment of the majority of citizens of Crimea, together with the intensely militarized state of the peninusla renders that an unlikely scenario.
A Ukrainian advance from Zaporizhzhi is probably the most likely feature of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, although it could easily be accompanied by others, including an advance on Russian positions in the north of the Donbass, or an attempt to recover ground in Bakhmut, once that ground conditions there have improved. In Bakhmut, Russia appears to control 90% of the city even as Ukraine holds on to the west of the center and even, as Prigozhin states, Ukrainian losses remain intensely high, perhaps 10,000-20,000 killed in total in Bakhmut, according to Russian sources.
Russia has resisted the temptation to close its pincer around Bakhmut, possibly with a view to avoiding Russian casualties. Additionally, as Ukraine continues to send men into the cauldron, Russia can more effectively play out the logic of its attritional war (first defined as such many months ago by General Surovikin). Many commentators believe that the extension of the battle for Bakhmut has worked much more handily for than for Ukraine.
Another possibility for the Ukrainian counteroffensive is to attack Russia itself, in Bolgorod.
Almost certainly the counteroffensive will greatly escalate the scale of the fighting, and of losses of life and equipment. Even though there has been what is – overall and from Ukraine’s point of view – a reduction in the quality and quantity of western weapons deliveries, such deliveries have been “surged” in preparation for the counteroffensive. Some of this “surge” takes the form of weapons that are still now being ordered and have yet to be manufactured.
There are six main presumptions I would recommend to bear in mind about the coming counteroffensive:
(1) it will take place, because the collective west has to prove that its jeapodization of the global economy, depletion of weapons stocks, and vast expenditure of taxpayer wealth, had some useful purpose – and the west shows no indication of a confessional state of mind right now;
(2) it will also take place in order to deter Russian progress, following its success in Bakhmut, towards taking Seversk to the north or Marinka and Avdievka to the south or, to the west, Vuhledar (which is being bitterly defended by Ukraine, and possession of which has implications for the viability of Ukraine’s intention to launch from Zaporizhzhia) and, therefore, the likelihood of Russian seizure of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk;
(3) it will be bloody, because this is industrial warfare and losses to all sides will be severe. Prigozhin says that Ukraine has 200,000 active forces on the front lines, with 40,000 to 60,000 preparing to participate in the counteroffensive, and another 400,000 in the rear. But training for at least some of the active forces is incomplete, and equipment inadequate. The EU’s plan to provide one million shells has collapsed because of low production rates and stocks. Greece has been put under pressure to give up its S 300 missile systems, and it has refused. Ukraine is running out of air defenses and, according to the recently leaked papers, will have run out of BUKs and missiles by mid-May. F-16s are not going to be available from the west in time, if at all. Amongst other things, weak Ukrainian air defenses make the bridges over the Dnieper very vulnerable. Ukraine’s energy system has been very badly degraded by Russian missile strikes over recent months (there were primarily intended to drain Ukraine’s air defense missiles) and this will likely impede transportation of men and supplies;
(4) the west will concentrate on territorial gains – and there will be some – and on threats to Russian security in the mainland and in Crimea and the Donbass, whereas Russia will concentrate on its war of attrition in which it now seems – by dint of circumstance – to be engaged not just with Ukraine but with the collective west, and in which it may one day soon to be assisted by China when the Taiwan conflagration explodes, instigated either by the US, possibly in some false flag operation, or by China exerting its national sovereignty over Taiwan;
(5) the counteroffensive will not end in resolution, which is a political matter for which no party appears ready or capable. But this will be Ukraine’s “last throw,” given that the weapons it has been given will have been exhausted, and the west will not be able to, or even want to, rebuild the Ukrainian army one more time. One possibility that is being canvassed is that China will offer mediation;
(6) the counteroffensive may open up entirely new rifts and fissures, possibly resulting from Polish expansionism (despite Polish military reservations, in view of the depletion of Polish weapons stocks that have been given to and destroyed in Ukraine – and perhaps Polish politicians are looking for some kind of payback) and Polish defense agreements with Baltic powers. In the long term, in my view, this raises more doubts about the sustainability of Poland and of the Baltic states in their current form than it raises about the security of Russia.
